Many of you will already be familiar with Twitter but for those who aren’t, it’s a service that allows you to post short messages (tweets) to your network of followers. It’s grown massively in the last year and has become a useful tool to people in all areas of life, including photographers.
For example, we have a Twitter account where we publish our updates, post tidbits of information and pretty much keep our followers up to date with whatever we’re doing behind the scenes.
When you publish a tweet, if one of your followers finds it interesting they might retweet it, meaning not only your followers get to see it, but all their followers too. Maybe one of their followers will also retweet it, taking it even further. Were sure you get the idea.
What does Twitter have to do with photography? Here are 4 ways photographers can use it to their benefit:
1. Get Exposure
You’ve been out with the camera, have taken a wonderful shot and you want to show it to as many people as possible. If you’ve published it online somewhere like Flickr, or maybe your own website, you can publish a tweet about it and instantly let your followers know it’s there. Even if you only have a few followers, 1 of those followers could have thousands of their own. If they retweet your link, you’re instantly exposed to thousands of people.
2. Stay Updated
You can also keep up to date with the latest work from the photography community. If you follow accounts that you’re interested in, you are notified on your Twitter homepage of their tweets. For example, if you follow us, you’ll get a tweet telling you that we have a new article or photo published, as soon as we publish it.
3. Quick Tips
Sometimes we’ll share a quick photography tip. Twitter limits posts to 140 characters so it’s perfect for short, quick advice that wouldn’t be enough to justify a blog post. There are many other people on Twitter that ONLY publish these quick tip type tweets, so if you don’t want to be bombarded with links and updates, just want the quick tips then just follow them and you’re sorted!
4. Get Your Questions Answered
Maybe you’re struggling with something and want some quick advice. Publish a tweet asking a question and hopefully 1 of your followers will be able to answer it for you. People can reply to your tweets by using the @ symbol before your account name. For example: @medianovak
Twitter is awesome! Sure, it takes some dedication and hard work, but that’s good for us! In todays age of instant gratification, it’s easy to see why some people don’t like Twitter, but they are missing out on a powerful tool for networking with others and marketing their brand and business.
At the end of the day, the key is that you have to first identify your goals, figure out the tools, learn about the community and then create a plan for your actions and behavior to accomplish your goals.
The REAL opportunity is in finding ways to use online and offline together; to integrate twitter, blogs, comments, communities, mailers, exhibits, books, etc. That’s where the real fun lies, and what few people do very well. Yet.
Recent Comments